Date of Award
2019
Document Type
Capstone
Degree Name
Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)
Committee Chair
Cindy Miller
Abstract
Student nurses have difficulty communicating effectively with older adults. Nurses willing to work with this age groups are in high demand due to the growing population. Lack of knowledge and preconceived ideas deter students from a willingness to work in geriatrics. Improving communication skills by increasing knowledge and decreasing bias in the clinical setting will benefit students and the community. The focus of this project was to discover if instruction, practice through role playing, and completion of a simulation with standardized patients prepare students for communicating effectively with older adults and increase the desire to work with this population. The participants included 16 first-year Associate Degree Nursing Program students, attending a small community college. One male and 15 females were included in the project. The project utilized a descriptive pretest-postest design. A pre-intervention and post-intervention 50-question quiz and Likert scale survey to determine if knowledge increased and bias decreased after the intervention was administered. A Likert scale survey was completed by simulated patient volunteers to determine how well the students communicated during simulation. A statistical significance was noted in knowledge increase and bias decrease. No statistical significance was found for student’s willingness to work with older adults.
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Citation Information
McEachern, Lena Moffitt, "Teaching Nursing Students to Communicate with Older Adults" (2019). Nursing Theses and Capstone Projects. 328.
https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/nursing_etd/328